ratexdb Version 0.1

So there I was, wanting to do database reports. MS reporting services
gave me tendovaginitis, so why not use Latex, I thought? Quickly I
found latexdb by Hans-Georg Eßer, and I liked the idea very much.

However, I needed it under Windows with an ODBC data source, and
latexdb is written in Python and Bash. My attempts to get it to run
failed, and I decided it would me more fun to rewrite it in Ruby and
include some improvements on the way.

Every variable can be included in the Latex source in one of three
flavours:

##varname in Latex source, replaces Latex special characters,

$$varname in SQL queries, replaces ' by '',

&&varname in SQL queries, accepts hexadecimal numeric input only.

The latter two are helpful to protect against SQL injection. The
$$varname variant is meant for string constants in SQL, the
&&varname variant for integer constants or GUIDs (used as primary key columns).

The database results can be post-processed by regular expression
search and replace. So you can conveniently replace database key
columns by their long value, change the format of numeric or
timestamp fields, etc.

Ratexdb allows command line arguments, which can be referenced in
the Latex source by variable names ##1, ##2, etc.

It is released under the GNU
GPL,
a copy of which you find in the package after downloading.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.